A private collection of material focusing on the never ending joys of the Trimet industrial complex
(https://twitter.com/AlYourPalster)
Dispatch/Control clips represent approximately 5% of all calls chosen at random

Trimess

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Friday, August 31, 2012

I have been enlightened to more facts about this Ron Heintzman re-election.
It appears that one of the ATU members conducted a challenge to the candidacy of Mr Heintzman after his candidacy was approved.

ATU international bylaws clearly state that challenges to elections and candidates must take place AFTER THE ELECTION.

Did this cost Mr Hientzman votes? Who knows but according to international by laws it is basis to challenge election results.I will be voting NO TO THE MOTION-BRUCE HANSEN PRESIDENT OR COUNT ME OUT!

Thanks for the Pain, Trimet

Dear Crappy Trimet Driver: My wife was on your #72 bus in her
wheelchair yesterday after her errands, expecting to get dropped off a
block from home — until you announced that *you refused to drive your
bus' assigned route* because of Last Thursday. You dumped her on
Killingsworth and made her roll herself all the way to Alberta. Thought
you might like to know that by the time she got home she was in tears
from the pain, and it will take her days to recover.
Hope it was worth it not to inconvenience yourself. Way to show your
committment to helping the community. Way to show your committment to
helping the disabled. Way to make it clear what your *real* priorities
are. You suck.

Here we see a pictorial of the face of the new breed of Trimet executives.
The suck blood from their employees and the riding public so they can maintain there 6 figure salaries.

They sik the police state on the poor who don't have fares and then propagandize them as 'free loaders' rather than destitute citizens.

I'm so glad I left when I did. I couldn't work for an organization the sucks the life out of its citizens and its employees.

All the while the executives pile up their huge salaries and exorbitant retirement pay. Something the phony media will never expose to the public.
The best solution to fighting the vampires? GET A CAR!

Those of us that know the history of this man know that this is the champion of sore losers. There has never been an election that he has lost that he hasn't challenged. (Wally Fiest, Larry Hanley)

So goes it at ATU 757 right now. It appears that his crony JONATHAN HUNT had appointed an election committee before he left office that was set up especially to make sure there was a challenge to the presidency if Heitnzman lost. Well he lost and the old reliable crony system functions just as well now as it did 100 years ago. The election committee has reccomended a new election of the presidency, the only race that had a somewhat clear victory for Bruce Hansen.
I personally think there should be new elections but president is not one of them. The treasurer lost by the thinnest of margins and the vice president lost only because of stupidest of rules that ATU 757 follows. YOU DON'T NEED A MAJORITY VOTE TO WIN OFFICE and we had some rather arrogant employees who decided they would throw their hat in the race. All of that lead to Jon Hunts Victory as vice president.

I have never been as hard on Jonathan Hunt as the majority of the membership has, but this is the last straw. We need to clear out the Heintzman/Hunt cabal once and for all.

Show up at the next union meeting and get this shit over with. The members are sick and tired of dealing with this blatant cronyism.If Bruce Hansen is deposed I AM OUT OF THIS UNION FOREVER.

The idea is to make riding TriMet a whole lot simplier by switching to
'go anywhere' fares. Now, all riders will have to do is purchase one
ticket and they'll be able to travel anywhere they like. That means no
more worrying about which zones your ticket is good for.
"It will be so much easier," said TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch. (what a load of crap!)

Riders
who now purchase a $2.10 one-zone ticket to ride, for example, will
have to pay 40 cents more as part of its balance-budgeting
one-zone-fits-all plan.

So, what better way to protest than stage a gold old-fashioned transit funeral in the public square?

On Thursday, the riders union Bus Riders Unite, organized by the nonprofit OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon,
will “mourn the loss of affordable fares and further cuts to bus
service” with a New Orleans-style funeral in Portland’s Pioneer
Courthouse Square.

I have been informed by a driver that the fare changes take place on Saturday and the route changes take place on Sunday.
Why in the world would they do it like that?
Oh of course, silly me, IT'S TRIMESS

I wonder if TriMet will apply the same essential cost-cutting measures to MAX stations. You know, since they have EIGHT large schedule signs for each stop, plus the Transit Tracker signs...when all they need is one three inch by three inch paper sign with the stop ID number and nothing else.

Why spend thousands of dollars having to print up new schedule signs, then paying a guy (at high wages, of course) to drive (using a TriMet fleet vehicle) to the platform to post the signs twice (or more) a year?

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Fine state of affairs TRIMET EXECUTIVES find themselves in.SAFETY VIOLATIONS are Standard Operating Procedure now that the Trimet managment team has completely disenfranchised SAFETY SENSITIVE EMPLOYEES to such a degree that they no longer are interested in going the extra mile to make sure service is provided adequately to the public.On top of that the RIDING PUBIC has taken to a GRAFFITI campaign in one more of the many acts of open rebellion to the masters who rule Trimet.The executives have done the unthinkable, lost the public and its employees all at once.In any sane world, management like that would be out of a job.

TRIMET management has alienated essential safety staff so badly that the crossing arm at 185th (willow creek)MAX crossing has been broken for THREE DAYS NOW because nobody will work overtime to fix it!(and Trimet's $155k man Sapporta is no where to be found)

Saturday, August 25, 2012

This is a seven car Sounder train. Each of its seven coaches can carry 162 riders. That's a grand total of 1,134 riders. Using a crew of just two, using railroad tracks used for dozens of BNSF and UP freight trains and Amtrak passenger trains.

That's efficiency.

Unlike TriMet's WES trains, that used seldom-used tracks that had to be extensively rebuilt (and now maintained at TriMet expense), whose (sometimes) two-car trains carry the same amount of riders as one of Sound Transit's coaches, using cars that have three diesel engines each in them and whose fuel economy (per car) is less than half that of a bus, but carries only twice the capacity of a bus. A one car train (most frequent mode of operation) still requires the same crew (two) as this seven car Sound Transit train.

And unlike WES, Sound Transit's trains serve a very highly utilized transit corridor - Seattle to Tacoma (and Seattle to Everett), not connecting the fourth largest suburb to the tenth.

However, like WES, these trains sit parked on the weekends...how many highways are simply closed down between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM?

Yup, believe it or not many operators are actually enforcing the PDX high school pass that says can't use till September.And then they wonder why Trimet and Trimet operators are so hated by the public.They make $25/hour but have the nerve to squeeze high schoolers.

Lets play Light rail trivia. Guess what this
is? A. a mess B. Trimet Maintenance of way management failure C. a light
rail curve greaser suffering from lack of maintenance D. all of the
above. Shhhh rail employees don't give it away. If you said D. you got
it right. The splitting of the track maintenance crew in half to staff a
graveyard shift has resulted in huge inefficiencies that managements ego
refuses to address. Hence more and more maintenance is getting deferred.
Don't blame the maintainers. This one strictly lands on managements door
step. Don't step in the big pile of grease it will ruin your shoes

LYNN — It is an experience familiar to most bus riders: a chase to
catch a departing bus, desperate bangs on the door, the despair of
watching the vehicle disappear into the distance.
But when an Everett man was left by a Route 455 bus outside Wonderland station, he sought revenge, police say.

If Trimet management wasn't treating the MOW crews like garbage and would change things back to where things were a couple of years ago you would see it return to where these problems at times were fixed in literally minutes.
As it is now screw Trimet I will never take a call.
As early as last year some of us in signals worked nearly a thousand hours of Overtime in a year.
Due to the changes management made I do not have one minute of OT in my year to date part of my pay stub.

Its managements prerogative to operate the business the way they see fit. But Overtime is not mandatory in maintenance and until they get rid of the changes they made most of us have agreed with each other to take no Ot. Don't blame the maintainers who for many years left their homes and families on a minutes notice to keep the trains moving with a minimal amount of delay, put the blame squarely on management where it belongs.

Budgeting. To run a household or a business it requires money,
money of which we have to budget out. If something needs to be covered
and can not be, one must "cut" into another budget area to accomendate
the added expenses.

It takes ten years for a TriMet Bus
Operator to be vested. Being vested is ideal, as it is full time work,
pension fully funded excluding health care for a twenty year period.
Every year TriMet management holds a public hearing, of which public can
attend to their financial diffulty, needing to do some cuts. Does
management listen? No, I personally say they do not. How I know? Let us
see, I have went to one of those meetings and have personally spoke of a
new plan providing TRIPLE of the billions of dollars they needed to
save. Did they take that in consideration? No, it was talking to deaf
ears.

I
am pleased to report that retroactive COLA checks for active employees
will be mailed on August 24. The gross total of the wages is
$6,001,646.96 and includes 2,318 separately mailed checks at an average
amount of $2,589.14.

Retroactive
COLA checks for retirees will be mailed by the end of August. They
have a different process for those checks, which involves US Bank. The
interface with the bank has slowed processing.

I got a call from a driver who informed me that a fleet wide message was sent out telling drivers that the PDX student ID's are no good till next week. A sane driver would ignore that and just accept them since they haveA '12' expiration date but this is now the third time they have wavered on this issue. What a hot mess Trimess is!